Sunday, May 31, 2015

President Obama and Joan of Arc (Sherwood Ross)

Today,
May 30, 2015, is the 584th anniversary of the day on which Joan of Arc
was burned at the stake by the British forces occupying France.

The
"Maid of Orleans" had the ill luck to be captured while she was
rallying her countrymen to throw off the English yoke and a pro-English
Bishop, Pierre Cauchon, after a grossly unjust trial, sentenced her to
death by fire. "Bishop, I die through you!" she reportedly told him.

Saint
Joan, as she is known since her canonization by the Roman Catholic
church, was only 19. Despicable as the Bishop's conduct was, he at least
made a pretense of a legal proceeding.

Contrast
this with the conduct of President Barack Obama, who likely may be
responsible for the drone killings of more than a thousand innocent
civilians across the Middle East, and who dispenses entirely with legal
niceties.

How
is it that Bishop Cauchon is reviled for a single murder yet President
Obama routinely wipes out human life on a grand scale and is not
prosecuted? How is it that foreign leaders will shake his hand?

Perhaps
an indifferent American public is proving Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin
correct when he told U.S. ambassador to Moscow W. Averell Harriman, "The
death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."

The
Bureau of Investigative Journalism(BIJ), London, a non-profit
organization known for its meticulous research, reported last month that
515 U.S. drone strikes since 2002 have killed at least, 2,887 people in
Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

The
drone strikes, inaugurated by President George W. Bush, "increased
during the Obama administration as did the number of casualties," the
BIJ reports. And McClatchy news service, citing a leaked CIA document,
reported "the CIA killed people who only were suspected…" of association
with militant groups.

As
for the right of President Obama to murder people, which is the correct
description of what he is doing, Professor Francis Boyle of the
University of Illinois and Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard Law
School, says:

"The
'honors' graduate of Harvard Law School President Obama has set himself
up as the sole Judge, Jury and Executioner of thousands of human beings
in violation of international law, human rights law, the laws of war
and the United States Constitution. Harvard Law School taught me that
makes Obama a felon and a war criminal and impeachable."

The
president openly admits authorizing the drone killings. As
pacifist/author David Swanson of Charlottesville, Va., pointed out in
his book "War No More," Obama killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American
citizen, who "was never charged with a crime, never indicted, and his
extradition never sought." Indeed, many of President Obama's drone
victims could have been arrested and tried had the U.S. gone to local
authorities with evidence of their culpability. We need to ask
ourselves, "What kind of nation prefers to murder people without a
trial? Would you call it Fascist, Communist?"

Swanson
cites figures to show that, in Pakistan alone between 2004 and 2013,
America made 372 drone strikes, killing between 2,566 and 3,570
individuals, of whom as many as 890 were civilians, including nearly 200
children---every one of them by definition---younger than Joan of Arc.

Imagine,
on this 584th anniversary of her death, a nation called America, a
country whose evil genius has invented the deadliest killing machines
ever, a country spending a trillion dollars a year on war, with 1,000
military bases overseas, and 11 battle fleets patrolling the Seven Seas,
and troops in 175 countries, and with its lying spokespersons claiming
it is all for 'defense,' is turning the clock back to the Dark Ages.
Apparently, Americans have lost their sense of proportion, their ethics,
their faith, their humanity, and worst of all, even their pity for the
victims of their crimes. Saint Joan, be with us today! #

(Sherwood Ross is a Miami, Fl.-based reporter and award-winning poet who
walked across Mississippi with The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and
others in 1966 to complete James Meredith's "March Against Fear" after
Meredith was shot. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)

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